New Global Architecture Trend Has Hit Melbourne

Melbourne’s skyline will soon be home to a new ultra-thin skyscraper which will be one of the thinnest in the world. This new design is dubbed “skinnyscrapers” and the residential tower Collins House will be 183 metres tall but only 11.8 metres wide.

With cranes already in use and the construction being underway, the $200 million luxury building designed by Bates Smart, an Australian architecture firm, and developed by Golden Age Group, it is planned to be completed construction in 2018. The “skinnyscraper” will be home to a total of 267 apartments consisting of one, two, and three bedroom apartments and it will also include sub penthouses and penthouses spanning across 57 storeys. Kristen Whittle, the design director of the project from Bates Smart says “it’s the slimmest by far – there isn’t anything similar in Australia. The only ones similar in the world would be in New York and possibly a few in Hong Kong”.

There are buildings already like this in New York and they have also scheduled another one to be built with a planned width of 14.3 metres. The foot of the building starts off with a width of 11.8 metres and then by the 15th floor, the width of the building expands by 4.5 metres which brings it to a total width of 16.3 metres. To be able to classify a building as a “skinnyscraper”, the aspect ratio – height of building by its width – has to be greater than 1:10, and Collins House will have a ratio of 1:15:5, which makes it one of the slimmest in the world.

Kristen Whittle then goes on to say that “we are building for people who are wanting more personalised vertical apartment buildings, there’s a market for that”. The developers of this project, Golden Age Group, had to buy air rights to be able to expand the building due to the Melbourne site only being 12.5 metres wide. However, the design is quite surprising considering the fact that Melbourne’s density falls short of the international scale with roughly 10,000 residents per square kilometre for this type of development. Whereas cities such as London have roughly 20,000 residents per square kilometre.

There is expected to be more ultra-thin towers be built with the assistance of some of the largest cranes we have to offer due to the increased demand for space in global cities. Tall buildings with a very thin width is a practical solution for our growing population and it is gaining the attention of multiple citizens. “The cities around the world, especially around the Asia Pacific where land value is increasing in the CBD, where people are also seeking to live and work in the city will see more of this type of building especially as technology becomes more fully understood”.